YouTube confirms that it is testing out blocking ad blockers on the site

Even though many websites on the internet are available for free, a large proportion of their income comes from advertisements, especially on YouTube where a lot of content creators earn income from ads within their videos. There are ad blockers out there however which prevent these adverts from displaying, denying the sites of income.

Earlier this week, reports were posted to Reddit that, when attempting to play videos on YouTube a prompt was displayed that prevented playback until ad-blocking software was disabled. This was later confirmed by a YouTube employee on the YouTube subreddit.

While it may be fairly clear why YouTube has decided to start testing this feature with a view to implementing it in the future, given that a large portion of income for not just YouTube but creators as well comes from the ads. However, many users in the same thread have expressed frustration at YouTube with their apparent increase in ad placement within videos on the site.

Of course, the same prompt encourages users to try YouTube Premium, which includes the removal of adverts within videos, and YouTube is wanting to drive subscriptions to the platform, hoping to capture users who wish to continue not seeing adverts on the site. Even though YouTube has looked into separate tiers of Premium to just block ads with no other perks, this has not come to light and only the main tier continues to exist in individual and family plans.

Source: 9to5Google